Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2025-005306 (PA/63914/24)

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

17th September 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BRUCE

Between

VK (ALBANIA)
(anonymity order made)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

For the Appellant: Ms Peden, Counsel instructed by Pambrook Solicitors
For the Respondent: Dr Ibisi, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

At: Manchester Civil Justice Centre on the 15 August 2026

Anonymity

Unless and until a tribunal or court directs otherwise, the Appellant is granted anonymity. No report of these proceedings shall directly or indirectly identify her or any member of her family. This direction applies both to the Appellant and to the Respondent. Failure to comply with this direction could lead to contempt of court proceedings.

DECISION AND REASONS
1. The Appellant is a national of Albania born in 1985. Her dependents are her twin children born in the United Kingdom in December 2000. They all seek leave to remain in the United Kingdom on protection grounds.

Background and Matters in Issue
2. The Appellant arrived in the UK in March 2020. She claimed asylum in October 2020. The basis of her claim was that she was at risk of gender based, or ‘honour’ based, violence at the hands of family members in Albania. She asserts that she is from a small village in the northern part of Albania, where traditional views and deeply patriarchal norms concerning the behaviour of young women persist. In 2018 she embarked on a relationship with a man who for the purpose of this decision I shall call ‘M’. M had a poor reputation locally and when her family found out that she was seeing him they were very angry. Her father had died when she was young, but two of his male relatives, who now cast themselves as her ‘protectors’, assaulted and insulted her. The Appellant moved out of the family home and went to live with M. The relationship was short lived. After it broke down the Appellant, fearing that the threats from her family would manifest as actual violence if she returned home, left Albania to seek asylum.
3. Before she arrived in the UK the Appellant became pregnant by a different Albanian man. Her children were born here. She has had no contact with their father since before their birth.
4. The Appellant waited 3½ years for a decision on her asylum claim. It was refused on 23 April 2024. The Respondent did not find the Appellant to be a credible witness and found that there would be a sufficiency of protection provided by the Albanian state if she returned.
5. The Appellant appealed to the First-tier Tribunal. For reasons that remain unclear, her representatives did not plead human rights grounds, so when the matter came before the First-tier Tribunal on 19 August 2025 the only basis upon which the Appellant could advance her case was protection grounds. She submitted that she was at risk of violence at the hands of her family, as she had set out in her evidence to the Respondent. In the alternative she submitted that as the single mother of ‘illegitimate’ children she would face stigma and discrimination in Albania, leaving her isolated and vulnerable to predation by traffickers and/or other malign actors.
6. The First-tier Tribunal dismissed the appeal in a written decision dated 19 August 2025. It found that the Appellant is generally a witness of poor credibility and rejected her evidence that she had received a threatening letter from her family. It found that if her paternal cousins had actually wanted to harm her they would have done so before she left Albania. It was however prepared to accept that the Appellant did have a relationship with M against her family’s wishes. In respect of the risk of trafficking/harm from others, the Tribunal agreed with the Respondent that there would be a sufficiency of protection, and in doing so rejected the evidence to the contrary given by expert witness Ms Antonia Young of the University of Bradford.
7. The Appellant appealed to the Upper Tribunal and on the 7 May 2026 the matter came before Upper Tribunal Judge O’Callaghan. The Secretary of State was on that occasion represented by Dr Ibisi, who conceded, properly in Judge O’Callaghan’s view, that the First-tier Tribunal had erred in failing to engage with the Appellant’s submission that she would face a real risk of serious harm in Albania on account of her being a lone woman/single mother of ‘illegitimate’ children. The First-tier Tribunal had engaged in speculation when it said that “as a considerable amount of time has passed” the Appellant’s sisters “may be supportive of her”. Judge O’Callaghan observed that this speculative conclusion was reached without engaging with the fact that the Appellant is now a single mother with two children. As to the Tribunal’s approach to the evidence of Ms Young, it had failed to make a finding on whether Ms Young is in fact an expert, so as to then identify what weight to give to her opinion evidence. Judge O’Callaghan then directed that the First-tier Tribunal’s findings that the Appellant was not directly at risk from family members be preserved, and directed that the remaining issues be re-determined at a later date. A transfer order was subsequently signed by a Principal Resident Judge of the Upper Tribunal, and this is how the matter has now come before me.
8. I will begin by making some general observations about the evidence, and in particular the weight to be attached to the various items of country background material before me. I then set out my findings on risk in light of the accepted facts.

The Evidence
9. The Appellant relied on reports by two witnesses, said to be experts in their field. I am told by the parties that at the ‘error of law’ hearing UTJ O’Callaghan questioned the expertise of both of these witnesses, in the context of the Appellant’s submission that the First-tier Tribunal had erred in failing to attach weight to their opinions. In her subsequent ‘position statement’, drafted to comply with directions given by the UT, Dr Ibisi submitted that neither had demonstrated themselves to be experts on the position of women in Albania.
10. If Judge O’Callaghan did express such scepticism, he has not said so in his written decision. To my reading, the observations at his paragraph 20 are simply an elaboration of the point being advanced on behalf of the Appellant, that the First-tier Tribunal had failed to properly assess the evidence, and/or explain the weight it attached to the reports:
“A further observation is made. The First-tier Tribunal failed to make an express finding as to whether Ms Young is an expert on the issues addressed in her report: Kennedy v Cordia (Services) LLP (Scotland) [2016] UKSC 6, [2016] 1 WLR 597, at [43] [44]; MH (review; slip rule; church witnesses) [2020] UKUT 125, [2020] Imm AR 983, at [39]. It was for the First-tier Tribunal to make a reasoned decision on this issue so as to then identify what weight to give to her opinion evidence”.
11. Nevertheless, and for the avoidance of doubt, I find that Antonia Young and Edlira Fejzulla are both experts on the topic of the position of women in Albania.
12. Antonia Young is an anthropologist who has, over five decades, specialised in the study of the Balkans. She has focused on Albania since 1989. She is currently an Honorary Research Fellow in the South East European Studies Unit in the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford. She has published numerous articles in academic journals, including the ‘Kosovo’ entry for Encyclopaedia Britannica, and has written 4 books on the region. She has been appearing as a recognised expert in this Tribunal for decades: the earliest example I have been able to find was her appearance in the 2004 country guidance case TB (Blood Feuds - Relevant Risk Factors) Albania CG [2004] UKIAT 00158, and I find no reason to doubt her claim to have prepared reports in over 1000 appeals.
13. As I understand it the principle objection to the claim of Edlira Fejzulla to be an expert was the fact that her first degree was in Environmental Studies. As is apparent from her CV, Ms Fejzulla has done considerably more in her life than complete that degree. She was for 4½ years the Monitoring and Reporting Co-ordinator for the Albanian Human Rights Group, overseeing a project looking at the prevalence of blood feuds and gender based violence. She then spent six years working on an anti-trafficking programme under the auspices of the OSCE. Since 2021 she has been a Programme Advisor to the National Democratic Institute in Albania. Unlike Ms Young, she has not published hundreds of articles, but that is because she is a practitioner rather than an academic, and her work has therefore been to contribute to policy and reports rather than journals. Ms Fejzulla has prepared over 50 reports for appeals in this Tribunal and I accept that she has been asked to do so because she has over her working life accrued an expertise on matters pertaining to Albanian society and politics.
14. I have found the opinion of both experts to be informative, well sourced and balanced. Their reports have been of considerable assistance to me providing background evidence that has enabled me to evaluate the risk to the Appellant. I am satisfied that both witnesses have the necessary knowledge and experience to offer the evidence that they do. I have no reason to doubt the impartiality of either, and nor, apparently, does the Secretary of State; at least no concerns in this regard have been brought to my attention. I am satisfied that the evidence of each witness is underpinned by a reliable body of knowledge and experience. I have therefore been able to attach considerable weight to the evidence of both Ms Young and Ms Fejzulla.
15. I have further had regard to the Respondent’s Country Policy and Information Note Albania: Gender-based violence Version 5.0 April 2026. The authors of this CPIN have consulted a wide range of sources and I am satisfied that insofar as the ‘note’ element of the report is concerned, it is balanced and helpful. I have treated the ‘policy’ elements as what they are: statements of the Respondent’s general conclusions on the evidence. I note as a general matter that the evidence in the CPIN was in many respects entirely consistent with the opinion evidence offered by Ms Young and Ms Fejzulla.
16. Although acknowledging that the Appellant has not to date been trafficked, the parties before me agreed that the risk factors identified in TD and AD (Trafficked women) CG [2016] UKUT 00092 (IAC) would be relevant to my decision.
17. The Appellant gave evidence before me and adopted her three witness statements, dated 28 March 2023, 14 March 2025 and 25 June 2026. She was cross examined by Dr Ibisi. Whilst I acknowledge the findings of the First-tier Tribunal that the Appellant was not generally credible in respect of some aspects of her claim, I found the replies she gave in response to Dr Ibisi to be straightforward and credible in the context of what we know about Albanian society. Where relevant, I have set out that evidence below.

Risk
18. The issue before me is whether the Appellant faces a real risk of serious harm upon return to Albania.
19. I begin by assessing the potential risk to the Appellant in her home area. This appeal has proceeded on the basis that certain matters are agreed. It is not in issue that the Appellant is a woman from a rural community in the north of Albania. Her evidence that her father died when she was a child, and she only ever attended primary school, has never been contested. The finding made at paragraph 26 of the First-tier Tribunal decision is preserved: “I accept that the appellant had a relationship with [M] against her family's wishes”. Those positive findings notwithstanding, the First-tier Tribunal clearly rejected the Appellant’s contention that she had faced a real risk of harm from her family at the time that she left Albania. It rejected several aspects of the Appellant’s evidence about M: her claim that she had initially moved in with him and his family, or that her family had sent a threatening communication to her at that address. It further found that had her cousins really wanted to do her harm, they could have found her and M. Observing that they did not do so, it inferred that this was because they had no interest in doing so, contrary to the Appellant’s stated fears. All of those findings are preserved and serve as my starting point in re-making the decision in this appeal.
20. The First-tier Tribunal further went on to conclude that there was “no credible evidence” that the Appellant’s family would regard her as having brought shame upon them, but this finding was made in the context of the Appellant’s relationship with her sisters, and was set aside by Judge O’Callaghan for impermissible speculation. I am bound to say that the First-tier Tribunal’s conclusions on this matter are also very difficult to square with the country background material on societal structures in northern Albania1, and with the Tribunal’s own acceptance that the relationship with M was outwith the bounds of marriage and contrary to her family’s wishes.
21. Before me the Appellant said that her father had died when she was young. She was one of 4 girls, and after her father’s death his brother, and his brother’s sons assumed ‘responsibility’ for them and their mother. This consisted primarily of offering them protection and overseeing their behaviour. As the Appellant puts it: “we are sisters without brothers so they are the ones that make the rules”. This seems to me to be entirely normal in the context of Albanian society. As various sources in the CPIN set out, Albania remains a patriarchal society with traditional views of a subordinate position of women being prevalent in many parts of the country, but in particular the north. See for instance at [8.2.1] where the concerns of the UN CEDAW committee are set out to the effect that there is a “persistence of deep-rooted stereotypes, including as a consequence of kanun… concerning the roles and responsibilities of women and men in the family and in society, which overemphasize the traditional role of women as mothers and wives, thereby undermining women’s social status, autonomy and educational and professional opportunities”.
22. The Appellant also told me that she has not had any contact with her sisters since she left Albania. When asked why, she said “because of the circumstances in which I left the family home and the problems it created”. She did not believe that they would support her if she contacted them now. Again, that seems to me to be entirely credible in the context of Albanian society. The First-tier Tribunal has accepted that the Appellant’s family were not happy about her relationship with M. The country background evidence is replete with examples of young woman facing harm in Albania because they violate societal expectations about the strict boundaries of sexual relationships. I see nothing extraordinary or suspicious in her claim that her sisters have, in effect, ‘cut her off’ for that reason.
23. All of that being the case, I consider what would happen to the Appellant if she were to return to her home area today, with two children in tow?
24. The children are, in Ms Fejzulla’s estimation, the “single most aggravating feature”2 of the Appellant’s profile. Ms Fejzulla references the concerns expressed by the Upper Tribunal in successive country guidance cases about the risks faced by unmarried/single mothers in Albania. The presence of children born outside marriage is precisely the circumstance singled out in TD and AD as rendering a returning woman “particularly vulnerable”, to various harms including rejection by her natal family. Ms Fejzulla writes [at 26]:
“[the Appellant] originates from […], a rural, mountainous and traditionally Roman Catholic district of northern Albania in which adherence to customary honour codes derived from the Kanun remains comparatively strong…it is precisely in such areas that the social consequences for a woman perceived to have transgressed are most severe, and where the prospect of safe and dignified reintegration for a lone mother of illegitimate children is most remote”
25. She continues [at 33-34]:
“33. In this framework, a woman who is seen to have acted upon her own romantic or sexual choice, against the wishes of her family, is not regarded as having exercised personal autonomy but as having inflicted shame (turp) upon her entire kin group. Scholars of Albanian society have described this mechanism as one of “feminised collective shame”, in which a woman’s perceived transgression tarnishes the honour of the whole family and is experienced as a collective injury requiring restoration. The woman is frequently the bearer of the dishonour even where she is, on any objective view, a victim. Victim-blaming and shaming are common and are not confined to the poorly educated; they occur across all levels of society.
34. The Secretary of State’s own country materials capture this dynamic with particular clarity. A United Kingdom fact-finding team that met representatives of the Mary Ward Loreto Foundation in Tirana recorded their assessment that, in the communities of the Albanian north, the prevailing attitude is that a woman “should be married, if not she has no worth”, that “she is created to be married and have children”, and that an unmarried woman “has no rights even in her own house”. Against that background, a woman who not only remained unmarried but who is known to have left her family for an unsanctioned relationship, and who returns with two children conceived outside marriage to an unknown father, occupies the most stigmatised position that this value system recognises”.
26. Nothing in the CPIN or other evidence before me gainsays what Ms Fezjulla says here about attitudes in the north of the country. It was no doubt for this reason that the First-tier Tribunal accepted that the Appellant does not wish to return to her family.
27. I find that the Appellant’s reluctance to do so is driven by her keen understanding of what would happen to her if she did. She and her children would, I am satisfied, very likely face rejection and ostracization by her family, leaving her homeless, without any financial or any other meaningful support. Although the CPIN makes reference to women living alone in the university towns of the south [see for instance at 8.4.1], and to shelters and NGOs offering assistance to women, it is clear from the context in which this evidence is stated, that no such provision exists in the rural areas of the north [see for instance 8.4.5, 8.4.7]. I am satisfied that this would expose the Appellant to the risk of serious harm. Being unable to provide basic necessities for her children, in circumstances where she herself is placed in the “most stigmatised position” in Albanian society, isolated from her family and society at large, would in my view amount to inhuman and degrading treatment. Being homeless and rejected by society may be a circumstance that a healthy adult male could be expected to endure, but I think it uncontroversial that the same cannot be said in respect of a woman with children. In her closing submissions Dr Ibisi acknowledged that the Appellant would be “vulnerable” in these circumstances, without going so far as to say what to: hunger, exposure to the elements, the danger of violence including sexual violence, and above all watching her children endure the same.
28. It follows that I need not consider whether the Appellant would be at risk of direct violence from her uncle and cousins if she returned today. I note that the parties proceeded on the basis that the effect of the First-tier Tribunal findings were that there is no future risk of ‘honour’ based violence from these relatives. For my own part I think that an unduly restrictive reading of the findings. The Tribunal certainly concluded that the Appellant had not been at risk of harm at the time that she absconded with M. It also concluded that they were not interested in “finding her”. It does not, it appears to me, actively consider what their views might be today if she turned up on their doorstep. It seems at least arguable, in the context of the country background material and what is said about the significance of ‘illegitimate’ children, that the Appellant may be able to make out a real risk, given her present circumstances. Ms Fejzulla, for instance, says this about the notion that the ‘passage of time’ may have improved the Appellant’s prospects: “Honour-based estrangement in this cultural setting is not, in general, a matter that dissipates with time in the way ordinary family disagreements may; it attaches to a perceived stain on family reputation that the birth of illegitimate children renews and deepens rather than erases”3. Since this matter was not however argued before me, I say no more about it other than to note that if there is any further judicial consideration of this protection claim, that may be a matter that requires some fact finding.
29. I therefore turn to consider whether the Appellant can reasonably be expected to avail herself of internal relocation within Albania, for instance to a large city like Tirana.
30. The case for the Respondent is that there is in the cities a good network of support for women in the position of the Appellant. As a general matter, there is a sufficiency of protection provided by the state, and women are able to live alone, or seek the support of a shelter, some of which are able to provide legal and psycho-social support.
31. I have looked carefully at the country background material. The CPIN on Gender Based Violence does indeed detail the provision of shelters in Albania. There were, as of 2024, 12 shelters for victims of domestic violence [12.2.1] but they have very limited capacity with only 32 beds for long-term stay and “1000s of cases” throughout the year [12.2.2]. In order to access a such a shelter, a woman must be referred by a co-ordinator [12.2.3]. Whilst the existence of such shelters is to be welcomed, it is difficult to see how it could be of assistance to the Appellant, given that she is not, on the findings of the First-tier Tribunal, a victim of any domestic violence. Similarly, whilst the Respondent is able to point to improvements made by the Albanian government in the provision for victims of trafficking, as set out in TD and AD, I cannot see how the Appellant would be able to access any of this. She is not a victim of trafficking.
32. The Appellant is simply a single unmarried mother, and it is apparent from statistics alone that some women are bringing up children on their own in Albania. The CPIN [at 8.4.9] cites the 2023 census record that there are 60,447 female headed households in Albania. Ms Fejzulla cites similar figures. What these statistics do not explain is how many of those are in the Appellant’s position. Many will, for instance, be women who have been widowed, and who continue to live under the ‘protection’ of other male relatives: this was the position that the Appellant’s own mother was in following the death of her father. Others may have husbands working abroad or be divorced. Ms Fejzulla reports that women who live alone in the cities “typically have some education, some work capacity, some family or financial support, or all three”. Neither she nor the CPIN are able to offer any information on how many of these households are headed by women who are uneducated, or who have never been married, or who are estranged from their natal families. Against that background, I consider whether it would be reasonable to expect the Appellant could establish herself in Tirana or similar city.
33. The Appellant could, as Ms Peden acknowledged, have the initial benefit of the voluntary return grant made by the Home Office. She could perhaps use this to pay the deposit on private rented accommodation. The children are now 5 years old, so within a year they will be eligible for free state education. I therefore consider whether the Appellant would be able to get a job while they are at school and use this money to support herself and the children. The expert opinion of both Ms Young and Ms Fejzulla is that this would be very difficult, if not impossible, for someone in her position. She has no education to speak of, and no work experience at all. Ms Young points out that “usually jobs are obtained through family connections; otherwise through bribes”4. Ms Fejzulla contrasts the position of educated, southern women with that of the Appellant:
“The aggregate of her vulnerabilities — minimal education, no work history, two dependent children born outside marriage, an unknown father, no male protector, no reliable family support, and the stigma attaching to her status — places her well outside the cohort of women for whom independent urban living is a realistic option”.
34. As for the possibility that the Appellant could rely on state support, Ms Fejzulla reports that “state welfare is far below subsistence level; and the support services that exist are concentrated, time-limited and oversubscribed”5; she considers the Appellant and her children to be at a “real risk of destitution”6.
35. The sections of the CPIN most relevant to the Appellant’s circumstances would appear to be the following:
8.4.10 The HO fact-finding team of October 2022 met with representatives of the General Directorate of State Police. During this meeting, they were told, ‘It is very difficult for a single woman or single mother to make it in Albania unless they are provided with a job or economic support. If they have neither they can never make it. So this is not official information but I know it happens.’
8.4.11 The HO fact-finding team met with representatives from the Mary Ward Loreto Foundation who stated, … ‘For a single woman with a child it would be very hard due to the lack of financial support ...’
36. The section goes on to mention the uphill struggle that single mothers face in getting child support from absent fathers [8.4.14], the “quite prevalent” incidence of sexual harassment in the workplace for single women [8.4.15] and the fact that women who have fled domestic violence very often end up returning to the perpetrators “because they see no other way out” [8.4.17].
37. I have already had regard to the Appellant’s most obvious personal characteristics – motherhood, lack of education or experience, being from the north – but there is another matter I consider to be of some significance in assessing how she would cope with relocation to Tirana. The Appellant states that her dislocation from her family, and her experiences since, have left her with anxiety, depression, fear, and emotional distress. I see no reason to reject that evidence. The Appellant went against all the expectations of her family and upbringing and now finds herself living in a strange country, isolated and having to support her two children. It seems likely that in such circumstances she would suffer from anxiety and depression. There is no medical report, or evidence of a formal diagnosis, but I do note that the Appellant has been prescribed three relevant medications by her GP: Citalopram, Propranolol and Trazodone. Although I have not given a great deal of weight to this matter, I do accept that she is for this reason more likely to face isolation, emotional distress and difficulties in overcoming the practical obstacles that she would face on a daily basis.
38. Having had regard to all of this evidence, I accept that the Appellant would find it extremely difficult to support herself and her children whilst living alone in Tirana. It was Ms Peden’s case that this economic and social precarity would in turn render her particularly vulnerable to trafficking and/or sexual predation by men more generally. In this respect Ms Peden relied on the still extant country guidance in TD and AD. I accept that this is another, important factor in my assessment. Ms Fejzulla puts it like this:
“64. In practical terms, a destitute woman without housing, income or family support, and carrying the urgent need to provide for two young children, may be driven towards unsafe accommodation, informal and unregulated work, or reliance on intermediaries — the very contexts in which exploitation, including sexual exploitation, commonly arises. This is not a prediction that [the Appellant] will be exploited; it is an assessment that her circumstances on return would place her within the cohort of women whom the objective evidence identifies as being at elevated risk of exploitation, and that this risk is a function of the same destitution and isolation that drive the other risks discussed in this report. The stigma she would carry — under which, as the previous expert Antonia Young observed, a lone returnee woman is liable to be assumed by others to have been involved in prostitution whether or not she discloses her history — would further reduce the protective resources available to her and increase her exposure.
65. My opinion is that, while trafficking is not a freestanding basis of risk in [the Appellant’s] case, her projected circumstances on return — destitution, isolation, stigma and sole care of two children — would place her at a real and elevated risk of exploitation by private actors, and that this risk is properly understood as one dimension of the cumulative vulnerability that her return would entail”.
39. It is clearly possible for women in Albania to live on their own; we know this because the statistics tell us that some women are able to do so. Having had regard to all of the evidence before me I am satisfied that the Appellant is not one of them. Without any support from her family she would face very significant obstacles not just in working or providing for her children, but in the form of trenchant discrimination and stigma, so that she will find herself socially isolated as well as destitute. I find it to be likely that she would find life in the city extremely challenging, both emotionally and practically, to the extent that it would be unduly harsh or unreasonable. It follows that the appeal must be allowed.
40. I note for the sake of completeness that the First-tier Tribunal accepted that the Appellant was part of a particular social group and that the Secretary of State did not challenge that conclusion.

Decisions
41. The decision in the appeal is remade as follows: the appeal is allowed on protection grounds.
42. There is an order for anonymity in this ongoing protection appeal, made because I consider that there is a strong public interest in maintaining the integrity of the Refugee Convention framework, such that the presumption in favour of open justice is in this case outweighed.

Upper Tribunal Judge Bruce
Immigration and Asylum Chamber
14 September 2026